Earlier this year, George passed his website on to me. Basically he wants me to keep it online and update it as needed. I have made a few small changes based on his recommendations as well as added a “Contact Chandler” mailto link.

There are several branches to the tree of opinions on the subject of Free Will and moral responsibility. I will briefly describe the main three of them.

Libertarianism

A libertarian simply says that what they do is their choice. They don’t really look further at the causes that led them to do it. Often they believe that humans make choices randomly. Often this means that people can do things for no reason whatsoever. This is something they must convince themselves because they want to feel that it is “up to them” what they do in their life. Those who become libertarian philosophers are almost always either extremely rich or extremely religious and believe that they deserve credit for using their god-given free will to choose better than other people did. This means they have little or no sympathy for the poor, sick, or mentally ill because they believe that anyone…

Here are some updated thoughts to what I posted a few days ago about challenges to finding an opportunity in academe…

In terms of my previous post, I need to mention that one of my biggest challenges is that as the primary caretaker of 3 kids under the age of 6, most of the teaching opportunities I see do not pay enough for me to have someone take care of children and for me to work. Recently, I ended up losing a contract with an organization because I didn’t have enough income to hire someone to take care of my kids (1, 3 and kindergartner) when I needed to work. I rarely see this as an impediment for cisgender men. It is also challenging for me to ‘build’ a traditional teaching record when positions offered have a salary so low that it literally cannot cover child care (as a man in…

Recently I have been trying to figure out how I can be happy even though the world is still full of suffering which I can do nothing about. I am discouraged by all the time I spent writing about what is wrong with abortion, buying meat and animal products, and religion in general. I don’t know if people have really payed attention to any of it and I am seeing that I may have wasted a lot of time. It doesn’t matter if what I say is true. Unless it makes people feel good, they tend to dismiss it.

Is it possible to be happy at the same time as knowing the truth about how the world really works? I currently don’t believe so. I would say that you are either educated and depressed, or ignorant and blissful. The old saying: “Ignorance is bliss”, may be one of the wisest things ever said. No wonder people escape into dreams and fantasies.

I recently saw the movie Tooth Fairy(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808510/). It is about a hockey player who has to spend a few weeks being a literal tooth fairy. Through his experience he comes to believe that having dreams, even unrealistic ones, is a good thing. What do you think about that?

In this video my mom and I talk about how we get along even though we believe completely different things as far as religion goes. We also talk about the false messages contained in the movie: God’s Not Dead.

This is a special video for my 28th birthday with the woman who gave birth to me. We get to talk about some serious subjects but have a great time too. This will be the first time the world will see what kind of mother I have.

The stigma surrounding mental health keeps people afraid of getting help for depression because people judge them for “choosing to be depressed”. This is something my mother wanted to educate people on and I suggested doing a video. I think it turned out great.